Author: Alex Xu, Research Partner at Mint Ventures
Introduction
After Circle's listing, its stock price surged (recently showing a noticeable decline), and the stablecoin concept stocks in the global market are also unusually volatile. The U.S. stablecoin bill (Genius Act) has passed the Senate vote and is making its way to the House of Representatives. Recently, there have been reports that World Liberty Financial, the pure blood project of the Trump family, may have its tokens unlocked for circulation ahead of schedule, marking a significant piece of news in the currently bleak and topic-deficient altcoin market.
So how is World Liberty Financial currently performing? How is the token mechanism designed? What should be the anchor for valuation?
Through this article, I will attempt to provide a multi-dimensional overview of the business status of World Liberty Financial, project background details, token mechanisms, and valuation expectations, offering several perspectives for observing the project.
PS: This article represents my stage-specific thoughts as of publication; changes may occur in the future, and the viewpoints are highly subjective; there may also be errors in facts, data, and logical reasoning. All viewpoints in this article are not investment advice and I welcome criticism and further discussion from peers and readers.
Business: Current Status of Products and Core Competitive Advantages
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is a decentralized finance platform co-founded by the family of U.S. President Donald Trump, with its core product being the USD1 stablecoin. USD1 is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar and fully backed by cash and U.S. Treasury reserves. World Liberty Financial also has business plans for lending (based on Aave) and a DeFi app, but these have not yet launched.
USD1 Business Data
As of June 2025, the circulation of USD1 stablecoin is approximately $2.2 billion. The supply on BNBchain is $2.155 billion, Ethereum supply is $48 million, and Tron supply is $26,000, with 97.8% of USD1 issued on BNBchain, indicating that the vast majority of USD1 is issued on BNBchain.
In terms of on-chain user numbers, BNBchain has 248,000 holder addresses, Ethereum has 66,000, and Tron currently has only one.
From the perspective of token holdings, 93.7% of USD1 on BNBchain (corresponding to $2.02 billion) is held in two addresses of Binance, with $1.9 billion concentrated in one Binance address (0xF977814e90dA44bFA03b6295A0616a897441aceC).
Looking back at the scale of USD1 tokens, we find that the market cap of USD1 was only about $130 million before May 1, 2025, but on that day, it soared to $2.13 billion, increasing nearly $2 billion overnight.
Growth curve of USD1's scale, source: CMC
This surge in scale primarily comes from the $2 billion equity investment in Binance by the Abu Dhabi Investment Company MGX in May 2025, where USD1 was chosen as the payment currency, and the USD1 token held in Binance's address happens to be around $2 billion.
This means:
After Binance accepted the USD1 investment from Abu Dhabi Investment Company MGX, it did not convert it into dollars or other stablecoins and is currently the largest holder of USD1, accounting for 92.8% of the total scale of USD1.
If we exclude the tokens formed from this exchange, USD1 is still a small-scale stablecoin with a circulating market value of just over $100 million.
In the future development of the project, this model of business expansion is believed to recur.
Business Cooperation
In market expansion, WLFI has currently established cooperation with multiple institutions and protocols.
In June 2025, WLFI announced a partnership with London-based crypto fund Re7 to launch a USD1 stablecoin vault on the Ethereum lending protocol Euler Finance and the Binance chain staking platform Lista, aiming to expand USD1's influence in the Ethereum and BNB Chain ecosystems. Lista is a major BNB staking platform invested by Binance Labs.
Additionally, the largest decentralized lending platform, Aave, has also initiated a proposal to introduce USD1 into the Aave markets on Ethereum and BNBchain, with the draft already receiving votes in favor.
In terms of trading platforms, USD1 has been listed on Binance, Bitget, Gate, Huobi, and is also available on DEXs like Uniswap and PancakeSwap.
World Liberty's Competitive Advantages
The competitive advantage of World Liberty is clear: the Trump family's strong influence in the political arena gives this project an innate advantage in specific types of business development that other projects do not possess. This project may also serve as a conduit for individuals, organizations, or even nations that have a business or political need for Trump to attempt to engage.
Binance used USD1 issued by World Liberty as a funding vehicle to accept a massive investment from the Abu Dhabi Investment Company MGX, and has since held it interest-free (equivalent to supporting USD1's TVL), and quickly launched USD1, which serves as a prime example.
However, the main risks for USD1 token holders are three:
The Trump family's channels for receiving benefits are very numerous; World Liberty may not necessarily be the one chosen by the benefactors (for more on the Trump family's various methods of financial gain, see Bloomberg's article published in late May: THE TRUMP FAMILY’S MONEY-MAKING MACHINE, which covers a wide range of schemes).
The WLFI token itself is decoupled from the value of the World Liberty project (which will be detailed in the following token model section).
After the Trump family sells the tokens, they may even abandon heavy operations of the project during or after the sale, effectively soft exiting (referring to Trump's past issuance of all cryptocurrency assets, from Trump tokens to various NFTs).
Background: Support and Financing Details
Core Team Background
The core team of World Liberty Financial comes from political and business circles, which is also the source of the project's core competitiveness and influence.
Undoubtedly, the soul of the project is Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States, along with his three sons - Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the 17-year-old Barron Trump.
However, their 'project positions' on the official website of World Liberty Financial have undergone subtle changes in the past month. In the mid-June official website introduction, Donald Trump's position was very vague as 'Chief Crypto Advocate,' while the three sons held equally vague titles as 'Web3 Ambassadors.'
In the project's 'Golden Paper', the four members of the Trump family are defined as follows:
Nevertheless, the positions of the four members of the Trump family are ahead of many project co-founders.
Team introduction page of World Liberty Financial in mid-June
However, recently, the official page's introduction to the four has changed to: Trump himself - 'Honorary Co-Founder,' while the other three sons have become Co-Founders.
Team introduction page of World Liberty Financial in mid-June
Another small detail is that Donald Trump himself, as well as another 'Honorary Co-Founder' Steven Witkoff (who previously held the title of Co-Founder on the official website, now changed to 'Honorary Co-Founder'), both have a nearly invisible footnote '1' added to their position descriptions, with an explanation at the bottom of the webpage, written in small text: 'Removed upon taking office.' This means once the individual takes public office, their 'Honorary Co-Founder' title will be removed.
This is a typical compliance practice aimed at preventing government officials from conflicting interests with the company while performing their public duties, meeting the ethical requirement in the U.S. that public servants or high-ranking officials must sever private business ties.
But the question is: Donald Trump is currently a public official in the United States - the President.
Apart from the Trump family, another heavyweight in the team is Trump's long-time business partner, New York real estate mogul Steven Witkoff, who serves as Honorary Co-Founder. He is the founder and chairman of Witkoff Group and has known Donald Trump since the 1980s; the two have long interacted and are known to be 'old friends and business partners.'
Since Trump took office, Steven Witkoff was appointed by Trump as the 'U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East,' reporting directly to Trump and playing a core role in major negotiations, including those with Israel, Qatar, Russia, and Ukraine. He is also Trump's 'private messenger' to Putin, having represented Trump in Moscow for meetings with Russian leaders multiple times.
The Witkoff family is also actively involved in the project: their sons Zach Witkoff and Alex Witkoff are both co-founders of WLFI.
Apart from political and business celebrities, the technology and operations of WLFI are largely handled by individuals from the crypto industry. Zak Folkman and Chase Herro are both co-founders and are serial entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency field; they founded the DeFi platform Dough Finance, which failed early on due to a hack. In the WLFI project, Folkman and Herro were initially the main controllers of the company but relinquished control to the Trump family-owned entity in January 2025.
Another core member, Richmond Teo, serves as the head of WLFI's stablecoin and payment department. Richmond Teo was previously a co-founder and former Asia CEO of the well-known compliance stablecoin company Paxos. Furthermore, the team includes blockchain professionals like Corey Caplan (Chief Technology Strategist) and Ryan Fang (Head of Growth), as well as traditional finance compliance experts like Brandi Reynolds (Chief Compliance Officer).
The project has also invited several advisors, such as Luke Pearson, a partner at Polychain Capital, and Sandy Peng, co-founder of the Ethereum Layer 2 Scroll network. Sandy Peng assisted with operational work during the token sale period.
The changes in the Trump family's shareholding in the World Liberty Financial project.
In fact, the Trump family's shareholding in World Liberty Financial has been declining, currently dropping from an initial 75% to 40%.
From an initial 75% to 40%, this declining share may have been transferred to Sun Yuchen, DWF Labs, and the recently announced $100 million participating investment from Aqua 1 Foundation (this is speculation).
Financing History and Investment Institutions
Since World Liberty Financial launched in September 2024, it has raised over $700 million through multiple rounds of financing, and its valuation has rapidly increased after Trump's presidency and the issuance of tokens.
I have summarized the financing situation for each round as follows:
Notably, according to the project's Golden Paper and website disclosures, the Trump family can receive 75% of the net income from the token sale (which should equal a de facto resale of token sale income through equity transfer) and 60% of future net profits from the stablecoin business.
Token: Allocation Details, Token Functions, and Protocol Revenue
Token Distribution and Unlocking Details
The governance token of the WLFI platform, $WLFI, has a total supply of 100 billion tokens. According to the official 'Golden Paper' token economic model, the distribution plan and unlocking schedule for WLFI tokens are as follows:
It is worth noting that the team allocated 35% of the tokens for the token sale, but currently, only 25% of the public sale has been completed, and there is no answer on how to handle the remaining 10%.
Additionally, the WLFI tokens, except for the public offering portion, have not clearly defined unlocking conditions and times in the additional terms, but currently, like the public offering portion, they remain in a non-transferable state.
The ambiguity of the specific unlocking terms for the non-public sale portion of the WLFI tokens brings a high degree of uncertainty to the project.
The worst practice would naturally be that the team unlocks this part of the tokens without prior notice and dumps them in the secondary market. A more reasonable approach would be to provide a prior announcement of the unlocking plan for the non-public sale portion of the tokens before the public offering of WLFI, and to conduct the unlocking in batches through formal community governance voting.
Token Functions
WLFI is a pure governance token, it does not have any dividend or income rights and does not represent a claim to equity in the project company; its value mainly comes from participation in governance.
Distribution of Protocol Revenue
In WLFI's official Golden Paper, the treatment of WLFI's protocol revenue is described as follows:
The initial $30 million agreement's net income will be held in reserves controlled by WLF (at this time, the Golden Paper refers to the project as WLF, later changed to WLFI) under multi-signature control, used for operational expenses, compensation, and obligations. The net income from the agreement includes WLF income from all channels, including but not limited to platform usage fees, token sale proceeds, advertising income, or other sources of revenue, after deducting agreed expenditures and WLF's ongoing operational reserves. The remaining net income from the agreement will be paid to entities such as DT Marks DEFILLC, Axiom Management Group, LLC, and WC Digital Fi LLC, which have connections to our founders and certain service providers (initial supporters). These entities have indicated to WLF that once the WLF agreement launches, they plan to use most of the fees received to support the agreement.
That is to say, the protocol's revenue mainly belongs to the entity companies behind WLFI (although these companies have promised to use most of the fees to support the protocol), but it is clear that WLFI tokens themselves do not have a direct link to business income.
Valuation: How much is WLFI worth in the long term?
Since WLFI's core business is stablecoins, we can refer to the valuation level of major listed competitor Circle, using its 'Market Cap / Stablecoin Market Cap' ratio to 'roughly' estimate the reasonable valuation range for WLFI tokens.
As of the end of June, the scale of USDC is approximately $61.7 billion.
Meanwhile, Circle's market capitalization during the same period was $41.1 billion; if options, convertible bonds, etc. are included, the approximate fully diluted market value is $47.1 billion.
In other words, Circle's 'Market Cap / Stablecoin Market Cap' ratio is: 411/617 ~ 471/617 = 0.66 ~ 0.76.
If we calculate based on the current WLFI stablecoin scale of $2.2 billion, the market cap of the WLFI project would be around $22 * 0.66 ~ 0.76, corresponding to a project valuation between $1.452 billion and $1.672 billion, with the WLFI token price ranging from $0.0145 to $0.0167.
Clearly, this is a figure that WLFI investors find hard to accept, as it barely places the first round of public investors near the breakeven line. Expectations for WLFI are high, potentially for the following reasons:
WLFI was not completely unlocked in the early stages; its circulating market value is far less than FDV, allowing WLFI to enjoy a higher premium.
WLFI is in its early stages, and its potential growth rate is far higher than Circle's.
WLFI has strong political resources and should have a 'Trump premium,' with many projects eager to collaborate with WLFI.
The sentiment and bubble in the crypto market are more aggressive than in the stock market, and WLFI will enjoy a higher premium than Circle.
WLFI may closely follow the timing of the U.S. Genius stablecoin bill's passage to issue tokens and enjoy high market sentiment.
……
However, we can also present corresponding counterarguments, such as:
Stablecoins are a business with a strong network effect; leaders should have a stronger competitive advantage and higher valuation premium than new players (think of the earning capacity of the number one in the field, Tether, compared to the second, Circle).
WLFI's project income is unrelated to WLFI; WLFI tokens lack value capture and should be significantly discounted in valuation.
Currently, 93% of WLFI's stablecoin market value is supported by Binance, resulting in low adoption and severely inflated business volume.
WLFI may just be one of the many 'white-label authorized projects' of the Trump family, and their approach to selling and operating might be as ruthless as that of Trump tokens and a series of Trump NFTs, possibly lacking long-term investment.
In the crypto market, especially in altcoins, liquidity has long dried up, and secondary players hardly believe in stories without solid business data support; most newly launched coins are in freefall.
……
As an investor, which side's viewpoint do you tend to adopt? It varies from person to person.
In my view, the short-term price trend of the WLFI token after its launch will depend on the final content and timing of the Genius Act's passage, but more importantly, it depends on whether the Trump family is willing to place WLFI in a core position in various benefit transfers and transactions, using it as a medium for interest exchange. This is specifically reflected by 'influential individuals\business entities\sovereign states' actively embedding USD1 (even symbolically) into their business processes in order to obtain political and commercial benefits, such as using USD1 as an investment currency (equity investment) or settlement currency (cross-border trade).
If there is a lack of similar intensive commercial news following the launch, WLFI's position in the Trump family's business landscape may be concerning, as they have better revenue channels.
Let's wait and see how WLFI develops after its launch.
So, when will the specific WLFI token transferability time be?
I guess it will be after the U.S. (Genius Act) bill is formally passed (it has already passed the Senate), which will be when the project can operate freely, and that time is not far off.